Power Rankings: The Xfinity Series gets a turn this week
Welcome to Power Rankings, where this week we take a look at the top 12 drivers in the Xfinity Series.
1. Daniel Suarez: Things are coming together for Suarez in his sophomore season. he’s got 12 top 10s, tied for most in the series, the best average finish (6.6), has finished on the lead lap of all but one of the 14 races this season and has a points lead of 21 points. Not too shabby.
Suarez’s marketability and sponsorship was a big reason why he landed a ride with Joe Gibbs Racing for the 2014 season. But he’s proving to be a pretty quick study too. He’s got a chance to win another race or two before the end of the season.
2. Erik Jones: We’re not sure Suarez is the favorite for the Xfinity Series Chase, however. We’d still take Jones at the moment. He’s led 204 laps (Suarez is second among regulars with 74 laps led), is the only Xfinity Series driver with more than one win and his average starting position is second. Yes. Second.
He’s just seventh in the points standings thanks to three bad finishes, including one on Sunday in Iowa. Jones finished 27th because of fuel pressure problems. A bad finish can destroy your Chase chances, but given that a win advances you to the next round, there’s no sense in betting against the only guy who’s proven he can win multiple races so far.
3. Elliott Sadler: Here’s Elliott Sadler doing Elliott Sadler things. He’s second in the standings and has 12 top-10 finishes. He’s led just seven laps, however, and his win came at Talladega in that controversial finish when the caution came out before the presumed winners crossed the finish line. In six full-time Xfinity Series seasons, Sadler has finished outside the top five in the standings once. That was last year, when he was sixth for Roush Fenway Racing.
4. Justin Allgaier: We’re guessing Allgaier is looking forward to the Xfinity Series’ trips to road courses later this summer. He’s got three career Xfinity Series wins and one came at a road course (Montreal). He could have had four, too, but he ran out of gas at Road America in 2011 while leading on the penultimate lap. Fun fact: Reed Sorenson won that 2011 race, while the rest of the top five was Ron Fellows, Jacques Villeneuve, Sadler and Mike Wallace.
5. Ty Dillon: Dillon’s become another driver very good at avoiding the bad finish. He’s got nine top-10 finishes but is a clear third in the standings. Why? He hasn’t finished any lower than 19th all season. After winning at Indianapolis in 2014, Dillon’s winless streak is at 61 races.
6. Brandon Jones: Jones is learning well from his teammate above. He has just seven top-10 finishes but is fifth in the points standings. How does one be in the top five in points while maintaining a 50 percent top-10 rate? You finish 11th, 11th, 11th, 15th, 18th, 25th and 12th in the races you don’t get top 10s.
7. Brendan Gaughan: Or maybe avoiding DNFs is simply a Richard Childress Racing thing. After all, RCR’s Cup teams have done a pretty good job of it over the past few years. Gaughan has six top 10s and is five points behind Jones in the standings.
8. Darrell Wallace: Wallace has two top-five finishes, more than three drivers ahead of him in the standings. But he’s in ninth in the standings because he’s finished 25th or worse in threee races. That includes at Las Vegas, where he got caught up in a vicious crash when NASCAR was painfully late in throwing the caution flag for a crashed car in turn 2.
9. Brennan Poole: We’re probably putting Poole a spot or two higher if he was (rightfully?) awarded the win at Talladega. Instead, he’s here in ninth, though he’s pretty much a lock to make the Xfinity Series Chase, which is pretty shallow. That’s not an affront to Poole by any means; it’s just that a guy in 8th in the standings shouldn’t be considered a guarantee in a 12-driver Chase this soon in the season.
10. Blake Koch: If you want an example of the gulf between Poole and the back of the top 12, Koch is a fine example. He’s 11th in the standings with two top-10 finishes and 83 points behind Poole. Meanwhile, Poole is 83 points behind Suarez for the points lead. Yikes.
11. Ryan Reed: We put Reed outside the top 10 for symbolism’s sake. Reed is 10th in the points standings despite no top 10s on the season. Or, to be more accurate, no top 10 finishes since he got that surprise win at Daytona to open the 2014 season. It’s really quite the remarkable streak.
12. Ryan Sieg and Jeremy Clements: It looks like these two are going to be fighting with Ross Chastain (and possibly Dakoda Armstrong) for the final Chase spot. Sieg and Clements get to share the honors of the spot in Power Rankings because they each have a top-10 finish.
Lucky Dog: Shout out to Sam Hornish for winning at Iowa on Sunday in his first start of the season. And props to Alex Bowman, who has led 44 laps and has four top-10s in four starts this season. Bowman’s 44 laps led puts him third among Xfinity Series regulars despite having 10 fewer starts than most of his competitors. Again, yikes.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
